The concrete-composite floating platform wind turbine was deployed off the coast of Castine, Maine by a team led by the University of Maine.

Offshore wind is a whopper of an energy resource waiting to be tapped, especially in Maine. The United States has an estimated 4,000 gigawatts of offshore wind potential, which is about four times America's current generation capacity. In Maine, the best wind is located above waters too deep for conventional wind turbine technologies.

With the support of a $12 million Energy Department investment over five years, University of Maine and its project partners conducted extensive design, engineering, and testing of floating offshore wind turbines, followed by the construction and deployment of its 65-foot-tall VolturnUS prototype. At 1:8th the scale of a commercial installation, this project will collect data to validate and improve floating wind turbine designs, while helping to address technical barriers to greater offshore wind cost reductions.

The University of Maine design uses advanced materials that help reduce the overall cost of the system while ensuring high performance and efficiency. For example, the floating wind turbine features a unique semi-submersible platform that uses a lower cost concrete foundation in addition to a lighter weight composite tower. As part of the five-year project, the Maine Maritime Academy helped test and conduct analysis on these pioneering designs, while the Pittsfield, Maine-based Cianbro Corporation leveraged its experience in maritime energy infrastructure and ship building to construct this first-of-its-kind wind energy system.